Ken Follett Famous Quotes
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But desperate people find courage.
A white American can orbit the earth, but a black American can't enter a restroom.
He said it in the half-embarrassed, half-defiant tone of someone admitting that he belongs to a religious sect. "You
My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era.
Dimka said angrily: "Why the hell do you risk everything for the sake of an empty protest?" "We live in a brutal tyranny," she said. "We have to do something to keep hope alive." "We
Unfortunately, most scientists were radicals, socialists, and liberals. There was hardly a conservative among them. And they believed that the truths discovered by science were for humankind to share, and should never be kept secret in the service of one regime or country. So while the American government was keeping this huge project top secret, the scientists held discussion groups about sharing nuclear technology with all the nations of the world. Oppie himself was suspect: the only reason he was not in the Communist Party was that he never joined clubs.
This was her destiny, and it was a fit and proper one. She was not unwilling, but she knew this was a fateful moment, and she had a sense of doors closing behind her and the path of her life being fixed irrevocably.
You will make love to a fat Prussian general who will call you his Liebling.
They all spoke some German, having been living in the German-speaking region of Switzerland. Lenin himself spoke it well. He was a remarkable linguist, Walter learned. He was fluent in French, spoke passable English, and read Aristotle in ancient Greek. Lenin's idea of relaxation was to sit down with a foreign-language dictionary for an hour or two.
Despite everything they say, they are not popular. And the longer they stay in government, the better people will get to know their wickedness.
I will marry a man who is clever and thoughtful and who wants his wife to be more than just the most senior of his servants.
I use a professional researcher in New York who does all the legwork, all that stuff which would take me days and weeks of calling, waiting for people to call back.
The people of the East End did not want to overthrow the British government. On the contrary, they were deeply attached to their elections and their borough councils and their Houses of Parliament. They liked their system of government so much that they were determined to defend it against Fascism even if it would not defend itself.
Fitz sat in a green leather armchair. To Ethel's surprise, Albert Solman was there, too, in a black suit and a stiff-collared shirt. A lawyer by training, Solman was what Edwardian gentlemen called a man of business. He managed Fitz's money, checking his income from coal royalties and rents, paying the bills, and issuing cash for staff wages. He also dealt with leases and other contracts, and occasionally brought lawsuits against people who tried to cheat Fitz. Ethel had met him before and did not like him. She thought he was a know-all. Perhaps all lawyers were; she did not know: he was the only one she had ever met.
Parliament banned the wearing of political uniforms in public. That finished them. If they couldn't strut up and down in their black shirts they were nothing. The
Movies have influenced all writers, not just thriller writers.
Hitler doesn't stir up hatred without a purpose.
1872 the anarchist leader Mikhail Bakunin warned Karl Marx that Communists in power would be as oppressive as the aristocracy they replaced. After what has happened in Russia, can you honestly say Bakunin was wrong?
wanted to see you again.
Fear could paralyse. Action was the antidote.
he guessed this was a Welsh regiment. The flare died. Walter leaped to his feet and ran, heading for the German side. The sentry would be unable to see for a few seconds, his vision spoiled by the flare. Walter ran faster than he ever had, expecting the rifle to fire again at any moment. In half a minute he came to the British wire and dropped gratefully to his knees. He crawled rapidly forward through a gap. Another flare went up.
We'll see, Grigori thought as he drifted off to sleep. Brave words came easily in the dark. Daylight might tell a different story.
Her great resentment was that she had had no education. When she was seventeen, she had announced that she was going to university - whereupon everyone had laughed at her. It turned out that you had to come from a good school, and pass examinations, before they would let you in. Maud had never been to school, and even though she could discuss politics with the great men of the land, a succession of governesses and tutors had completely failed to equip her to pass any sort of exam. She had cried and raged for days, and even now thinking about it could still put her in a foul mood. This was what made her a suffragette: she knew girls would never get a decent education until women had the vote.
Desperate men are dangerous. And I do know that the United States is not ready to go to war against Japan. Our navy isn't ready and our air force isn't ready.
There's nothing wrong with white people. They just ain't black.
No candidate is perfect' said Lloyd. 'It's how you deal with your weaknesses that matters
Feeling that everyone else was so much more powerful and sophisticated than he was, he had lost sight of his true values, suspended his critical faculties, and placed his trust in his superiors. His reward had been treachery. He
institution, poor mite." Lloyd had heard how the baby had been delivered by eleven-year-old Carla. That little girl
Texaco's chairman, the Hitler-admiring Torkild Rieber, was using the company's tankers to smuggle oil to the rebels in defiance of a specific request from President Roosevelt.
Perched on top of the pointed nose of the
Dimka wondered what it must be like, to love a woman for half a century and then lose her, suddenly, between one beat of the heart and the next.
Barrow, who evidently had never seen an atlas, felt superior to Descartes, Rembrandt, and Beethoven.
America is free because it has disrespectful newspapers and television shows to expose and shame presidents
That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character - I have a dream today.
People are much more complicated in real life, but my characters are as subtle and nuanced as I can make them. But if you say my characters are too black and white, you've missed the point. Villains are meant to be black-hearted in popular novels. If you say I have a grey-hearted villain, then I've failed.
The first casualty of a civil war was justice, Philip had realized.
Philip looked incredulously at the tiny bundle in Johnny's arms. He reached out a hand tentatively, and lifted a corner of the blanket. He saw a wrinkled pink face, an open toothless mouth and a little bald head - a miniature of an aging monk.
The knowledge that someone was trying his best to kill you was overwhelmingly oppressive,
You mean there isn't an indisputable book that is the actual Word of God? Men argue about it and make a judgment?
Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended.
He had forgotten that God saw through the silk robes to the sinful heart, that the only wealth worth having was treasure in heaven, and that even the king had to kneel down in church. Feeling that everyone else was so much more powerful and sophisticated than he was, he had lost sight of his true values, suspended his critical faculties, and placed his trust in his superiors. His reward had been treachery.
They were the same height and weight, and could wear each other's clothes. But Lev had charm by the ton. He was unreliable and selfish, and he lived on the edge of the law, but women adored him. Grigori was honest and dependable, a hard worker and a serious thinker, and he was single. It would
Fitz did not censor her mail but, as the head of the family, he had the right to read any letter addressed to a female relative living in his house. No respectable woman would object.
In Germany the police had supported the Nazis and sided with the Brownshirts. Would they do the same here? Surely
Flares and small incendiary bombs began to fall as the car approached Kreuzberg. The neighborhood was a typical target for the RAF's current strategy of killing as many civilian factory workers as possible. With staggering hypocrisy Churchill and Attlee were claiming they attacked only military targets, and civilian casualties were a regrettable side effect. Berliners knew better.
Hard work should be rewarded by good food.
You don't give up on democracy every time you lose a vote, Ethel said crisply.
He was like a man who has got used to drinking the finest wine, and now finds that everyday wine thats like vinegar.
All birds and men are sure to die but songs may live forever.
He was nineteen years old, homeless and rootless, with no family and no purpose in life.
I have quite a few different Bibles. Having rejected my parents' religion, I still think the King James Bible is the most important work of literature in English. None of us can help being influenced by it.
Lowther looked shocked. "That would mean it's our policy to kill civilians." "Exactly." "But the government assures us - " "The government lies," Boy said. "And the bomber crews know it. Many of them don't give a damn, of course, but some feel bad. They believe that if we're doing the right thing, then we should say so, and if we're doing the wrong thing we should stop.
Archdeacon Peter's face was like stone. He was the worst kind of Christian, Philip realized: he embraced all of the negatives, enforced every proscription, insisted on all forms of denial, and demanded strict punishment for every offense; yet he ignored all the compassion of Christianity, denied its mercy, flagrantly disobeyed its ethic of love, and openly flouted the gentle laws of Jesus. That's what the Pharisees were like, Philip thought; no wonder the Lord preferred to eat with publicans and sinners.
Women wanted a new deal, and they expected him to know, without being told, what the deal was, and to agree to it without negotiation.
The CIA's research program is described in a book called The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.
Philip believed that caring for people was the service of God. That was what salvation was about.
Mam kissed Ethel and said: "I'm glad to see you settled at last, anyway," That word ANYWAY carried a lot of baggage, Ethel thought. It meant: "Congratulations, even though you're a fallen woman, and you've got an illegitmate child whose father no one knows, and you're marrying a Jew, and living in London, which is the same as Sodom and Gomorrah." But Ethel accepted Mam's qualified blessing and vowed never to say such things to her own child.
She was wilful, maddening, quarrelsome and intolerant, but somehow these things were trifling: there was a passion inside her that burned like a candle in a lantern, and it lit up his life.
A secret shared is a secret no more.
Her breasts had changed, too. He remembered when they had stuck out from her chest as if they were weightless, the nipples pointing up. Then, when she was pregnant, they had become even bigger, and the nipples had grown larger. Now they were lower and softer, and they swung delightfully from side to side when she walked. He had loved them through all their changes. He wondered what they would be like when she was old.
They usually had easy answers: send all the Mexicans home, put Hells Angels in the army, castrate the queers. The greater their ignorance, the stronger their opinions. Georgetown was only a few minutes
Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.
He had never before thought of himself as gullible. He wondered where he had gone wrong. It occurred to him that he had let himself be overawed - by bishop Henry and his silk robes, by the magnificence of Winchester and its cathedral, by the piles of silver in the mint and the heaps of meat in the butchers' shops, and by the thought of seeing the king. He had forgotten that God saw through the silk robes to the sinful heart, that the only wealth worth having was treasure in heaven, and that the even the king had to kneel down in church. Feeling that everyone else was so much powerful and sophisticated than he was, he had lost sight of his true values, suspended his critical faculties, and places his trust in his superiors.
He was afraid he might say or do something that would offend King Stephen or Bishop Henry and turn them against Kingsbridge. French-born people often mocked the way the English spoke their language: what would they think of a Welsh accent? In the monastic world, Philip had always been judged by his piety, obedience, and devotion to God's work. Those things counted for nothing here, in the capital city of one of the greatest kingdoms in the world. Philip was out of his depth. He became oppressed by the feeling that he was some kind of impostor, a nobody pretending to be a somebody, and that he was sure to be found out in no time and sent home in disgrace. He
With hindsight, we see that the Soviet Union never had a chance of world domination, but we didn't know that then.
A woman would always prefer to be remembered than forgotten.
I wake up with the story in my head, so I really like to be at my desk about five minutes after I wake up. So I don't get dressed. I put on a bathrobe, I make tea and sit at my desk.
It was said that pilgrims should not spend too much time planning their journey, for they might learn of so many hazards that they would decide not to go.
An apology is designed to make the offender feel okay so that he can do it again. Don't be sorry. Kincaid tried to gather the shreds
He asked himself what was so striking about her, and realized immediately that everything was in harmony, like the parts of a beautiful church. Her mouth, her chin, her cheekbones, and her forehead were just as he would have drawn them if he had been God creating a woman. She
No, thank you, it's nothing serious. A headache that was not serious was the usual euphemism for a menstrual period, and everyone accepted this without further comment.
With the World War II era, there's so much written material to draw on. When you go back to the 14th century, you have to imagine more.
We cannot hope to understand the world - all we can do is stand amazed at God's creation.
Macke went to the door. He looked at the three women: the maid, the wife, and the daughter. "All this trouble," he said, "for the sake of an eight-year-old moron. I will never understand you people.
In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness.
jaw. He examined his morning beard, pulling the loose skin this way
Political issues were interlinked more closely than he had previously imagined. He had always thought that problems such as Berlin and Cuba were separate from each other and had little connection with such issues as civil rights and health care. But President Kennedy had been unable to deal with the Cuban missile crisis without thinking of the repercussions in Germany. And if he had failed to deal with Cuba, the imminent midterm elections would have crippled his domestic program, and made it impossible for him to pass a civil rights bill. Everything was connected.
Don't ask!" said Bevin. "If you ask questions, you'll get answers you don't want.
After all, if you can't kill a man in front of God's face you probably shouldn't kill him at all.
... sentiments which Feliks had already come to recognise as being characteristic of The Times, which would have described the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as strong rulers who could do nothing but good for the stability of the international situation.
To him, money was like the toy bank notes in Monopoly: he wanted it, not for what it could buy, but because it was needed to play the game
His aim was the glory of God, but the glory of Philip pleased him too.
Don't worry. We who are born poor have to use cunning to get what we want. Scruples are for the privileged. She
The atmosphere in Washington was different. President Reagan remained popular, despite having committed crimes far worse than those that had brought Nixon down: financing terrorism in Nicaragua, trading weapons for hostages with Iran, and turning women and girls into mangled corpses on the streets of Beirut. Reagan's collaborator Vice President George H. W. Bush looked likely to become the next president. Somehow - and Jasper could not figure out how this trick had been worked - people who challenged the president and caught him out cheating and lying were no longer heroes, as they had been in the seventies, but instead were considered disloyal and even anti-American.
You're a queer?""That's exactly what" title="Ken Follett Quotes: You're a queer?"
"That's exactly what I am. I didn't choose to be."
After a while Woody put his arm around Chuck's shoulders.
"Well, what the hell," he said. "At least you're not a Republican.
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We've been married almost a year, and I've known you for two, but I've never met one of your colleagues," Rebecca said. "They would bore you,
The power of a king was not absolute, after all: it could be restrained by the will of the people.
Why was it, Lloyd wondered, that the people who wanted to destroy everything good about their country were the quickest to wave the national flag?
Nor would he care what the target was. If they bombed Chile, it would be the same as bombing New York.
Our government doesn't necessarily agree with Wilson's Fourteen Points." Maud nodded. "I suppose we're against point five, about colonial peoples having a say in their own government." "Exactly. What about Rhodesia, and Barbados, and India? We can't be expected to ask the natives' permission before we civilize them. Americans are far too liberal. And we're dead against point two, freedom of the seas in war and peace.
There was a long moment of silence. Philip was holding his breath. When Remigius looked up again, his face was wet with tears. "Yes , please, Father," he said. "I want to come home."
Philip felt a glow of joy. "Come on, then," he said. "Get on my horse."
Remigius looked flabbergasted.
Jonathan said: "Father! What are you doing?"
Philip said to Remigius: "Go on, do as I say."
Jonathan was horified, "but Ftaher, how will you travel?"
"I'll walk," Philip said happily. "One of us must."
"Let Remigius walk!" Jonathan said in a tone of outrage.
"Let him ride," Philip said, "He's pleased God today."
"What about you? Haven't you pleased God more than Remigius?"
"Jesus said there's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people," Philip countered. "Don't you remember the parable of the prodigal son? When he came home, his father killed the fatted calf. The angels are rejoicing over Remigius's tears. The least I can do is give him my horse.
Again and opened the other. This is my financing.
Communists in power would be as oppressive as the aristocracy they replaced.
Aliena's brother, Richard, sometimes reminded her of her father, with a look or a gesture, and that was when she felt a surge of affection.
It's great that in the German language I've sold almost 30 million books. Isn't that amazing?
He had quoted Lenin: 'He who controls Berlin, controls Germany; and who controls Germany, controls Europe.
We move by inches, not miles,' said Gus Dewar with a smile. 'That's politics.
Did she go to Washington Redskins football games, or follow the Nats baseball team?
In the struggle for female equality, Maud reflected, sometimes you had to fight women as well as men.
Why do the Fascists want violence?" Ethel asked rhetorically. "Those out there in Hills Road may be mere hooligans, but someone is directing them, and their tactics have a purpose. When there is fighting in the streets, they can claim that public order has broken down, and drastic measures are needed to restore the rule of law. Those emergency measures will include banning democratic political parties such as Labour, prohibiting trade union action, and jailing people without trial - people such as us, peaceful men and women whose only crime is to disagree with the government. Does this sound fantastic to you, unlikely, something that could never happen? Well, they used exactly those tactics in Germany - and it worked." She went on to talk about how Fascism